Sunday walk to Hallowell and back

 Looking towards Augusta from Hallowell over the frozen Kennebec river

 The pink Michelin Man outfit with the fluffy IceCream hat at Hallowell boat launch.

 The lone Ice fishing house on the Kennebec at Hallowell.  Do not know if anyone is inside trying to coax the fish to end their days of swimming back and forth under the ice.

 A pile of ice on Western Ave.  note that the snow has melted, but this pile of ice is what is left of the piled up snow that they put there when they scraped up the parking lot behind it.

 Big sign in Hallowell advertising notes about the houses of historical note.

 one view of the Kennebec from Hallowell.

 The Ice house but in the foreground is Bill Markham who is about to walk out onto the ice at the boat launch to get a better pic of the Ice fishing house.

 I promise not to tie up my boat other than to load and unload persons or merchandise.  Especially while the river is frozen.

 Bill Markham out on the Ice.  Actually, the ice is resting on the cement apron of the boat launch so there is no fear of him falling into the river unless he loses his footing......and he didn't

The ice is breaking up at the boat launch.

Today’s lesson on the creation was taught from the writings of Abraham chapter 4 and 5.  For a couple of the members the concept that the world and its contents were spiritually created before they were physically created was a totally new concept.  I had not been a member of the church very long before I was asked to give a talk in church and the subject was the creation.  I knew nothing about it to begin with not having been taught in the Church of England anything or any detail other than there was Adam and Eve and a serpent.  As I was reading the scriptures they gave me to read and extrapolate a talk from it, it suddenly hit me that all things were created spiritually before they were created temporarily.  I was so excited about that.  It was totally a new concept:  Totally unexpected and totally fascinating.  One of the class members today said just the same thing.  It leaves one thinking and marveling at the whole spectacle of a spiritual creation being a distinct possibility and not just the BIG BANG THEORY that seems to be taught in schools.

One lady was commenting to me that I should stay for next winter because after all, this was not a winter to remember in Maine.  It really has not been a winter.  I’m ok with the winter that we have had.  It has been sufficiently cold and sufficiently icy and sufficiently snowy for me.  The primary children at church were to have had a snow play day tomorrow, but there is insufficient snow for them to go sledding.  The river looks like it is beginning to thaw and there is an Ice house on the river in Hallowell but it is very close to shore.  I suppose that the ice there is thick enough, but in many places there appears to be puddles on the ice as if the river has broken through.

We went waking this afternoon on the rails to trails from Augusta to Hallowell.  This is about 2 miles and we walked further down the main street of Hallowell till we got to the boat launch and we walked to the river and we saw an ice shack on the ice.  It is the only one in Hallowell that we have been able to find and it looks rather pathetic and lonely just a short way from the shoreline.  I do not know how people get to it without falling through the ice and I cannot see how a fish would really want to be caught in this icy river.  The ice is broken up in big chunks at the boat launch and Bill went walking out onto them.   On the way down the melting ice was just water on the trail, but on the way back the sun had left the trail and the melting ice had become small ice rivers that were quite slick.  It was really nice to be on the trail because there were many people on it walking together and some had their dogs with them.  There was a little boy tromping in the snow on the rail bed and he was having the time of his life.  Of course he was not moving along the track quite as fast as his father would want him to move, but he will only be this age for today and tomorrow he will be older and pretty soon he will be an adult with children of his own.

We talked to Sara and the children over skype.  Seems that skype uses up a lot of our hot spot usage but I am very happy  to talk to the children and Sara.  They found lessons in German on the internet and the children were all saying Guten Tag and very proud of themselves.  I expect that after they have been in Germany for a while they will know way more German than I can remember right now………and I have not used it since 1972.  I suppose I will have to brush up on my German skills.

Being a senior missionary is a strange experience – especially being here in Maine.  We have had to change car insurance coverage due to the  fact that our insurance that we bought in Arizona does not cover us in Maine.  Pretty strange way of doing business but I suppose that is what happens when you travel away from your home state.  It is an unexpected happening.  Another thing is that we do not have a TV at our disposal. Oh there is one in the apartment, but the area here has changed to some format that this TV does not ‘speak’ and we did not purchase the cable service.  In a way it is a relief not to be tied to the TV for news coverage etc.  We can get the news from the internet when we get to the Archives and use their internet connection.  I can use the hotspot to send the blog and the best thing about not having a TV is that we are not bombarded with commercials for the candidates who are running for office in November.  It is such a relief not to have to hear them bashing each other in an effort to sway my thoughts one way or another.  In former years, they got on soap boxes in the city park and preached what they believed was their platform and if people disagreed, the speaker got pelted with rotten eggs or rotten tomatoes but today the just throw TV commercials at each other and the people in their living rooms, either mute the commercials, switch channels, leave the room or just plain turn off the TV.

We don’t have  a TV to turn off, so we save our own energy.